Scott Valdez graduated from the University of Georgia in 2006 and hit the ground running. He joined a startup specializing in business services and learned all the ins-and-outs of getting a company off the ground. As young go-getters are wont to do, Valdez worked all the time, some 70 hours a week. It barely left him enough time to play hockey with his friends or get to the gym, let alone meet women. In other words, he was a perfect candidate for online dating.

"I had to choose between having a social life and keeping in shape," says Valdez, 26.

Like an estimated 40 million Americans, Valdez eventually utilized online dating services. He had prior success via the Internet, meeting his first serious girlfriend through Facebook in 2003, but the ongoing process of monitoring, maintaining and updating the online profiles took up way too much of his time.

What Valdez needed was a 21st-century version of Seinfeld's "relationship intern," albeit one who would pay close attention to the details and not get distracted by "frolf" a la George Costanza.

Valdez posted an ad on Craigslist and hired someone to keep tabs on various sites like Match, Cupid and Yahoo Personals. Using the profile that Valdez created, his personal online dating assistant sent out the messages. In return, he sent Valdez back an updated Excel spreadsheet with female profiles that might be of interest. When Valdez told his overworked friends about it, they all said it was a service they could use.

In 2009, Valdez founded Virtual Dating Assistants, a one-stop shop for outsourced online dating needs. Basically, the service eliminates the time-consuming grunt work that comes from trolling for fish in the sea. "At the end of the day, online dating is filtering the masses to find the appropriate profiles," Valdez says. "No matter how you play it, dating is a numbers game."

 

In surfer lingo, the term "sick" doesn't mean a rider is ill from swallowing too much ocean. Rather, it means something is rad awesome insanely cool. A prime example: "These waves are sick."

Entrepreneur Mike Sick, 55, hopes his surname provides a fitting description for his invention, the Surf-Grip, a pair of foam paddles that he says act "like water skis for your hands."

The idea for the Surf-Grip came out of Sick's tendency to get frustrated by his lack of buoyancy while bodysurfing, particularly on slower days. His "big fat floaty hands" would get in the way of a good ride, so he started mixing and matching household flotsam and jetsam in an effort to combat sinkage. Sick experimented with diced-up pool noodles, trashcan lids, ski pole handles and ultimately, pieces of bodyboards. In 2008, he got serious, spending $20,000 of personal savings to create a prototype and produce a run of 5,000 for summer 2009.

A native of Syracuse, N.Y., Sick decided to make his home in San Diego, for reasons that need no explanation. A marketing guy from way back, Sick spent a number of years helping to build brands in the restaurant industry with clients including Jack in the Box, Arby's and Pizza Hut. (Remember when the Pan Pizza debuted in 1980? He was there.) As a consultant, Sick worked with inventors of unique offerings like a self-cleaning litter box and an elevated doggie bathtub, helping create campaigns for unorthodox products. He found the experiences inspirational but also limiting, because the growth potential wasn't vast for products where the model is "wake up in the morning and see how many orders came in overnight."